Nule

In the northern corner of the territory, at Santu Lisei, there are the traces of a prehistoric village and a dolmen, and from there comes the little bronze that made the place known: a figure with the body of an animal and the head of a man, the man-headed bull of Nule, today in the archaeological museum of Cagliari. In the territory the nuraghi are thirteen, and one of them, the nuraghe Voes, is a complex structure and an important example of megalithic building on the island; there are also two giants' tombs. Nule stands at about seven hundred metres, on the last spur of the Buddusò plateau, in the Goceano. In the Middle Ages it was in the giudicato of Torres; when that fell, in 1259, it passed to the Doria, then to Arborea, and from 1350 the whole area was Aragonese. In the seventeen hundreds it was taken into the duchy of Monte Acuto, and it bought itself free of its lords in 1839.

Nule is known for its carpets: they are of Sardinian wool and are woven on the vertical loom by the craftswomen of the village, which has a museum for its own craft. The other thing the village is known for happens every June. For more than a century and a half the feast of Sant'Antonio da Padova has been kept here, and what is handed out is su casu furriadu chin bussiottu, a little triangle of bread folded over cheese. From the end of May the volunteers, the friends and the women of the village work the dough for days; the bread is baked in the oven and then given out with the cheese and the meat that the shepherds donate. The first thirteen days of June, the days of the preparation and the distribution, are called s'Impinnu — the pledge, the vow. And on the war memorial the bronze Victory is a woman dressed in the traditional costume of the place.